Coming to the end of my project, I find that there were quite a few deviations in the direction of the project. Although the deviations may not allow me to achieve the goals set initially at the start of the project. I didn’t want to disregard any new ideas and gave myself extra headroom to experiment with felt was best for the project.
What I’ve set out to achieve:
I will break it into 2 sections
Goals:
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4 mid-length cinematic short films featuring 4 different cities in the UK
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Self-produced Music for all of the short films
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City-specific Foley is to be produced for all the short films
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Completion and premiere of short films on the 19th of May 2023
Skills to be learnt:
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Cinematography skills
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Better familiarity with the camera and its settings
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Gimble skills (If able to be acquired)
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Editing software skills (Davinci Resolve)
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Fields Recording skills
What I achieved:
Goals:
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3 mid-length cinematic short films featuring 3 different cities in the UK
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Self-produced Music for all of the short films
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City-specific Foley produced for 1 of the short films
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Completion and premiere of short films on the 19th of May 2023
Learned skills:
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Cinematography skills
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Better familiarity with the camera and its settings
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Gimble skills (If able to be acquired)
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Editing software skills (Davinci Resolve)
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Colour grading
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Fields Recording skills
What are the shortcomings and how it has affected the project:
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[Growing pains]
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As expected at the beginning of the project, I anticipated that there would be some adjustment difficulties when changing my document process and also using a different site builder to reflect on my work.
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Because of this, the project started with a lot of site-related issues and also the need to create templates for the site pages which contributed to a lot of time loss.
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Fortunately, because I reflected on this earlier, I was able to adapt my timetable and created a process where I would work on the reflective journal every day instead of at the end of the week to spread out the workload and alleviate any time loss.
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I have then done this every week and followed this change as closely as possible, allowing me to complete my project on time and preventing burnout.
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[Working with a client]
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I was given an opportunity to work with a client with their FMP as they needed a cameraperson for their music video. And because the venue was set on a night club I used this as a learning opportunity as in the event that I will be shooting in a darker environment or getting some night shoots, I will be prepared.
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The issue that arose was the lack of organisation with their project because initially, I was planning to work with them on the shooting day which only lasted a day but because the client didn’t anticipate that Ofsted was planned to arrive at the college on that day, the shooting location was unavailable for the majority of that day which only gave us 1hr to shoot.
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We managed to shoot that hour which went well though, working with the client, I felt that I have been given the role to generate ideas for them which were not agreed upon.
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Because of this, I have used up more of my own time helping on the project than I liked to.
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This is a valuable experience for me because it was my first time working with a client. And also learn to understand my boundaries and what I do on the team so that I won’t take up unnecessary time.
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Fortunately. Because of the previous problem with growing pains, during this time I have already caught up on my reflective journal work so this didn’t affect my project too much.
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[Equipment]
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Equipment load
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Coming into this project with the focus on travelling alone, I quickly come to realise how much an extra hand may help with either carrying equipment or arming other devices to make the experience more efficient,
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I found that I had to reduce my equipment load to prevent injury whenever I had to travel on my own compared to the time I travelled with a friend who was willing to give a helping hand.
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Because of this, I feel that this has had a great impact on the production of the short films as I am more reliant on the software and limited by some of the movement that came with using the gimbal
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However, in a way, this gave me more freedom during the trip as arming the camera turned out to be quicker during handheld mode and moving around was easier as well which in turn allowed me to shoot more footage.
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Furthermore, because of the reliance on software, led me to learn more about the software which in itself is a good thing.
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Camera gear:
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As said in my proposal, initially I was going to rent the camera lenses, which on second thought wasn’t logical as the price of renting gear 3 separate times rose the price too high for me to afford. Thus I did not go ahead with this idea and stuck to the one that I already had. Unfortunately, I was also refused a rental for the school camera lenses because I would be travelling away from college for my shoots.
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However, this forced me to reconsider and also be creative with the types of shots I was going to get with the lens I have which in some ways added to the feel of the project.
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DIY Microphones setup
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My attempt at this was to be able to replicate a bi-directional microphone with 2 lav mics taped to the left and right of my bag. Unfortunately, this didn’t work out as the number of adapters needed to transfer the signal from the lav mics to the XLR ports wasn’t strong enough to be picked up. Even when trying different recorders and also cables, I was unsuccessful in making it work which was very disappointing.
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But even though that was the case, I felt that this was a good learning experience on the limitation of DIY also during the problem solving I manage to explore the settings of the recorder which proved to be more helpful during the trip.
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Wind noise
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As is noticeable with all my field recordings, wind noise was extremely apparent in the locations, so much so that It was unusable for 2 of the other locations which was a problem that I did reflect on in the reflective journal.
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The solution to this was to get a windkiller for the field recorder to cut out as much wind as possible but the price of this proved to be too costly.
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Furthermore, in the feedback form, it seems that others have also noticed the wind noise saying it would have “benefitted from a higher cutoff on the high pass filter” which I should’ve considered when editing the short film.
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[Travel]
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Cambridge
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As unfortunate as needing to cancel one of my short films, this allowed me to learn the importance of planning in a real-world scenario. Booking out a venue takes time and is usually done weeks in advance which I did not account for.
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Because of this, I was not being able to go as I will not have enough locations to shoot due to needing to pre-book a lot of the places that I was interested in going.
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But the cancellation of the trip gave me extra time to book and plan the route to the rest of the locations that I plan to go and send out any emails to places if need be.
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And because of this, I was now quite ahead of schedule for the next few trips.
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Train issues
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Because of travelling by myself, on the way back from Nottingham, I accidentally missed the change over at Leister because I misunderstood the second train start time with the first train end time at Leister.
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Fortunately, the train I’m on stops in London so I can get back with a direct train to Peterborough but that means buying an extra ticket.
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I will take this as a learning opportunity and double-check the ticket times if there is a changeover to prevent this from happening next time.
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Was my project successful?
With the project proposal in mind, I feel that I have done a decent job to match the project proposal as close as possible. However, Throughout the project I have since ventured off, prioritising less on the audio aspect and more on the video editing aspect which although not fitting entirely to the brief, was still good enough as an end product.
Furthermore, it has been successful in giving me research about new plugins that I will be using from now on, Things such as the BBC Orchestra symphony recorded by Spitfire audios made a huge impact on the overall direction of the audio for this project from the genre of the music to the pacing of the short film.
The only this that I didn’t achieve is the 4 short films that I planned to make which I have only done 3. That is because of the shortcomings mentioned in the shortcoming section and in a way you can class this as unsuccessful but that allowed me to improve upon the next 2 short films better as I had more time to do so.
Looking at the public feedback overall it has been rather positive with all the scores being 7+ out of 10 when asked if they have enjoyed so in that sense it has been a success. Also, 80-90% also said yes to having learnt more about the different locations in the respective videos which is what I was trying to achieve. Though I have also asked if the music and the short film fit the feel of the city and the results were more mixed with the average score being 3-4 out of 5.
I feel that is because of a number of things:
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The weather
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During most of my trips, it was overcast for the majority of the time. This may have affected the piece negatively because of the music choice I decided to put behind it.
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For example, Nottingham was raining heavily at some points during the day so I was not able to consistently shoot sunny footage which did contrast with the upbeat song that I have used behind it.
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To remedy this, for future reference, being more flexible with the filming day will allow me to focus more on the weather so in the event that the weather isn’t looking too good I will be able to rebook a different day where the weather is better. I have explained more about this in the “What could I change” section of this evaluation.
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The City
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It could also be that I was not able to cover other parts of the city as I only had a set limited time to film the city which may have missed some iconic locations.
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For example, London has a massive collection of iconic areas and activities that I was not able to capture in one video and in one day.
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I have explained a solution in the “What could I change” section of this evaluation.
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Overall, This project definitely taught me some valuable skills to make me a more versatile artist and I have learnt skills that are multi-disciplinary and have now given me more freedom in creating art.
How does it compare to other short films?
In terms of the quality of the films, it is unfortunately not of the same quality due to equipment such as lenses; Camera skills and overall editing and colour grading skills though these things come with experience and also it was my first time attempting this project though it was significantly better than my older short films that I have attempted to create.
What I could change:
If I were to redo this project, I would’ve allowed myself more time to research and plan ahead having needed to cancel one of my short films. I want to also look deeper into the audio side discovering and/or making microphones to make the process of recording more efficient because of how unconventional the user setup is with recording alongside using the camera.
If possible that I have more resources I would’ve been able to acquire new hardware such as a Bidirectional microphone, Chippy mics, better cables, windkillers and higher quality field recorders that would’ve improved the audio quality of the pieces then I wouldn’t have need to build the DIY lav mic setup that I did before. Also, thanks to the feedback, the possibility of editing the foley would be something I would consider as I was focusing too hard on the editing of the clips and also the music tracks.
Further into planning, again if I had the resources, I would’ve liked to location scout the area that I’m shooting first and although using Google Earth to look at the location in 3D space it is not the same as physically being there. I would also like to plan multiple days of shooting so that I don’t miss anything and have more footage to play around with during editing. And if it would be possible, Having a vehicle on hand would’ve given me more freedom to travel to more interesting locations closer to the outskirts of each of the cities which could possibly get me better shots and again more shots and audio recordings to use during editing. Also, in the event that the weather is bad, I will have the freedom to go on a different day if needed when the weather is nicer.
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This will also remedy some of the public feedback mentioning that some of the clips were very similar to each other. This is because of the limitation of the areas that I was shooting.
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Though I do feel that I should look more into transition in between the shoots to make the short films more fluid.
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I have since researched some youtube short films that reflect this aesthetic.
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For the music-making process, It would be a better idea to be able to record more Acoustic instruments instead of using the VSTs to get a more natural sound. This would reflect the feel I was trying to achieve for the natural parts of the videos.
As for the presentation of the piece, I think the projector used to showcase the video didn’t give accurate colours as the image turned out to be very dim on screen. This is why the feedback reflected that the colour grading needed to be more permanent. If I were to present this again I will be using a higher quality screen to showcase my work and one that is also brighter.
The Future of the Project:
As you can see how the short films have been labelled, I have purposefully made them simple and on a linear scale (Project, 1,2,3) and have not included an outro concluding this project. This is so that if I were to pick this up again whenever the opportunity arises then I will be able to name it accordingly,
Furthermore, I will definitely take into consideration the shortcomings that this project had to make any future short films and hopefully improve their organisation and quality to a better standard.
I hope to be able to continue this project in my own time when travelling to a different location during my holidays.